


touch my mouth and hold my tongue

by orphan_account



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, M/M, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Sexual Abuse, Victim Blaming, a Bad Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 19:55:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8503279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: His father never does anything. He never touches him. He never needs to, when he has someone else to do that for him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> not super graphic but please do be careful

 

The first time, he is young (he is young the last time too, but that doesn’t matter). He’s young—ten, maybe eleven—and eager to please. But he has been falling behind in his firebending training—and he’s the crown prince now, he can’t afford to be this incompetent anymore, because he suddenly matters a lot more than he did before.

The first time, he had messed up bad in front of his father at practice that day. The first time, he is young and panicked and terrified.

The man comes in the middle of the night. Zuko thinks he maybe recognizes him a little, in some vague part of his mind, but everything is different in the middle of the night, and it’s too dark to get a good look at him—and getting a good look at him is the last thing on his mind, because the man is yanking the sheets down and clamping a large hand over his mouth and pinning down his thrashing limbs like they are nothing. 

Zuko jerks his head to the side and goes still when he sees his father standing a few feet away. 

“Father?” he asks, still muffled by the man’s hand.

His father doesn’t respond, just walks (glides, almost, cloak billowing around him in the dark night air) a few steps over to the chair near the window, and sits down. Watches. 

“Father?” he tries again, but Father still doesn’t respond. He looks at the man holding him down and, after a long moment, nods.

His mouth is suddenly free, and he can breathe again, but then the hands are dragging down his chest, yanking his shirt up, twisting his arm back and back and back when Zuko tries to scratch at him, and it’s all going so fast and so warm and so confusing—

_“Father?”_ he asks, begs, pleads, voice rising, hot hot hands on his waist and shoving his pants down, “Father, what’s going on? Help me, please—Father, what—“

The man forces his legs apart and pushes in _hard_ —something big and hot and dry and burning stretching and he _screams_ —the man claps his hand back over his mouth and Zuko is reeling, spinning, aching, it feels like he’s being spilt in two, ripped apart, and then the bed is creaking and the man is moving—

in and out and in and out and in and out and in andoutnadinandoutandinandoutandinand—

Zuko feels like he is dying. And he _doesn’t understand_ —his father is sitting there and he isn’t doing anything and Zuko is young and terrified and confused and hurting and—

Vaguely, he feels the man stop. Pull out. Glance up at Father.

Through the haze, Zuko feels his father look him up and down (bleeding shaking hurting crying), look him in the eye, and then say: “Again.”

Big, rough hands lift him up and flip him over onto his stomach. Everything goes hazy after that.

 

After—after the man gets off of him and dresses and leaves, after it’s Over, he hears his father’s voice.

“This,” his father says softly, “is what happens to prisoners of war—peasants or pretty little princes all the same. You probably wouldn’t even have the luxury of a bed, then.”

There is a long pause, and his voice is suddenly much closer, an anchor in the dark, “With the bending you showed me yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, this could easily be you.This had to happen so you could learn, you see?” he puts a hand on his trembling head, and Zuko flinches, “This wouldn’t have happened if you were stronger, if you were better.”

“So get stronger, Zuko,” Father leans in, mouth against his ear and fingers stroking absently through his tangled hair, “get better, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.” he stands, “Now go clean yourself up, you’ve ruined these sheets.”

His footsteps echo and the door swings shut. It takes him a very very long time to uncurl himself and get up. 

 

Other men come. When Zuko messes up too bad, embarrasses himself or his father, can’t perfect this move or this strategy or talks back too man times. They come by themselves, sometimes, with orders no doubt from the Fire Lord. Most of the time, though, Father is with them. 

He never does anything. He never touches him. He never needs to, when he has someone else to do that for him. 

Zuko fights back, at first, every time. One time, he manages to get his hands around the other man’s arm long enough to burn him, kick his way out from under him and run frantically for the door (not again not again it hurts not again). The door is locked, but Father comes up behind him, taps his shoulder, and unlocks it for him. 

It keeps happening—not often, but enough that he tries, he really really tries, to work harder, get better, get stronger. It keeps happening—and sometimes it happens and Zuko doesn’t know _why_ (because he knows, he understands now, why it has to happen—he has to learn the hard way what it means to lose in this world, he has to learn so he can grow and get stronger and stop being so weak). 

Those times, his father is there, and those times, when he fights and thrashes and eventually loses, he feels his father’s eyes on him the whole time, and wonders if this is what his father wants. 

 

His father only fucks him once. 

It is quick and brutal and painful, blunt fingernails digging into the crooks of his knees to keep his legs open, red hot fingers against the skin of his thighs, cold words hissed at him through the haze.

“Embarrassed me—in front of the entire court—“ he hears, bits and pieces of whispers he can barely focus on, “disrespectful,” and “should’ve killed you when I had the chance” and “fucking disgrace,” 

He can only see out of one eye, the other wrapped in layers and layers of white—his father is a blurry figure above him, still shirtless, Agni Kai bands around his upper arms. He is angrier than Zuko has ever seen him, which is a lot, and he has never touched him before but he is now because none of the other lessons ever really sunk in and now Zuko has ruined everything and 

“Maybe now you’ll finally learn—never could _beat_ the insolence out of you,” Father growls, hips snapping forward hard. Zuko cries out, and for once, no one tries to silence him. 

His cries turn into a scream when Father reaches out and presses down _hard_ on his bandages, fiery pain shooting up the side of his face and it feels like being burned all over again and Zuko is crying again and his father says _“Pathetic.”_

Eventually, like all the other times, it ends. Father pulls Zuko’s singed pants back up and tucks himself away and stands. Looks down at him and says “You are banished, effective immediately. Don’t come back unless you can show me the Avatar in chains.” 

He is young the last time, too. 

 

 


End file.
